David Greig's play showing the aftermath of a mass shooting leaves Dominic
Cavendish reeling.

When a “boy” goes berserk and slays lots of young people in a “mass shooting event”, can that be attributed to something a rational mind can grasp? To the ideology he professes, perhaps – protecting his tribe from the perceived threat of multiculturalism and a modern world gone soft? To something that happened in his childhood – bullying, say, or a parental absence? Is there a psychiatric label that might work – narcissism, repressed homosexuality, a messiah complex?

What if there were no adequate explanations and the violence was so atavistic it couldn’t be fathomed? What if, in a few words from David Greig’s superb new play, The Events, making sense of such barbarity was just “an endless throwing of yourself against a wall in the hope you’ll break it down, which you won’t.”

Over the course of 90 minutes we see a woman – Neve McIntosh’s Claire, a liberal, enlightened, friendly vicar – try to comprehend a massacre she only narrowly survived and which was targeted at the welcoming choir she runs for vulnerable people. We see and hear such a choir – 14-strong, singing beautifully on a simple stage that might be its rehearsal space.

We see too the non-cooperative outsider in its midst, played by Rudi Dharmalingam, a fine actor of Asian descent who also, with understated versatility, plays many other characters. In a boldly experimental fashion that combines a logical narrative progression with subversive, non-naturalistic elements, Claire’s descent into a kind of madness is charted in a way that winds up feeling cathartic without seeming pat.

The piece, directed by Ramin Gray for ATC, clearly flits in the shadows of the Anders Breivik massacre – yet, combining allusions to Viking warrior shamen with references to Leeds and other closer-to-home localities, it’s its own beast. Witty without being flip, wise without being sententious, provocative without being callous, it’s probably the finest, most important thing Greig has written.